Anyone else just barely pulling this whole Christmas thing off this year?
Creating Magic just feels exhausting when the heart is full of aches and bruises.
Making Christmas. Isn’t that a bizarre and overwhelming proposition in the first place? If we do nothing at all, does Christmas still come?
The dog will surely eat the dollhouse. The clutter of even more stuff may finally sink this ship. The kids are getting so OLD now and I feel a tremble of dishonesty as I stubbornly persist, sprinkling wonder, ‘making Christmas, making Christmas, la la la.’
I find myself wishing for an impossible simplicity while enacting the very opposite madness. Shopping, spending, wrapping, decorating, and curating our home for maximum glow.
There’s no doubt I am a madwoman.
I cannot not do what I do.
You know that movie Rise of the Guardians? I AM THAT SANTA.
“Eyes that see the Wonder in everything.”
That is what Bolshevik Santa professes is his centre.
While all this magic-making feels a little unnecessary and puffed up right now, like a string quartet on the deck of the titanic, it’s also inescapable.
We must be who are are, at our centre, with all the more chutzpah and f-you-covid than ever.
Salvaging useless old forgotten things and christening them as Loose Parts is one of my fight songs.
It’s my declaration of infinite potential; the worth and repurposing of what was forsaken.
Avoiding brand new merchandise, wrapping gifts in fabric with real ribbon, and sourcing one-of-a-kind antique items for my children….this feels like activism, love, and delirious joy to me.
A broken up battalion of chess folk from the battle of Waterloo. Incomplete, never played with. They simply sat as spare pieces for forty years in their boxes. That’s what the fellow who sold them told me.
Then Miss ‘kijiji’ Gigi rescued these glorious, weighty, and exquisite soldiers for $1.00 a piece, saying “arise and play!” Arise and join our ragtag troops and find your place in our peculiar ranks!
And there you have it…
The meaning of Christmas.
We are gathered up in Christ. We belong to a wonderful band of misfits! Oh, what great and glorious company!
We have noble purpose beneath all this dust and we are never beyond redemption.
Remember who you are, and bring it.
Even if all goes down in tears and the dog actually eats Christmas.
Even if covid has you shut away, boxed up, and alone.
You’re not really alone.
You are resplendent beyond measure.
And you are worth the rescue.
That is why He came.
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